Mark 12:38-44
When I was a kid, it was always
such an odd experience whenever I ran into a teacher from school in a different
context. I can’t quite explain it; it was just sort of jarring. There I’d be,
walking beside the buggy with my mom at the grocery store, when who should be
bent over the meat cooler shuffling through the pork chops but Mrs. Smith, my
fourth-grade teacher. I wouldn’t know what to do: should I keep quiet and try
not to be noticed, hoping perhaps to keep some respectable disconnect between
the worlds of school and everything else? Or, should I call out her name, using
this unusual moment to show my mom that I was indeed a good student and that
Mrs. Smith had actually meant all of those positive comments that were written
on my report card? I always went or the first option, believing it was better
to go unnoticed, not taking the chance to sully my own image in the mind of my
teacher by my “not at school” appearance.
It was always
an odd thing to run into a teacher outside the context of the school day and
the school building. It was, however, all the odder whenever I ran into a
teacher outside of school who was clearly hoping to avoid running into any
kids. This happened one day when my mom and I stopped in at the Beeline on the
way home one summer afternoon. The Beeline is a gas station just a couple of
blocks from the Boll Weevil Monument on College Street in Enterprise. It’s
nothing too special; the last time I was there (a little over a year ago) they
still had the old gas pumps that didn’t take cards, bars on the windows and
doors, and still looked pretty much the same on the inside with the two
crock-pots of boiled peanuts next to the coffee pots in the back corner. It was
at the Beeline that my mom and I ran into Mr. Garth. Now, I have to tell you,
Mr. Garth was a sort of legend in Enterprise, a well-respected, well-loved
elementary school teacher and eventual administrator. He had been my mom’s
sixth grade teacher, my step-brother’s sixth grader teacher, but he had moved
to the superintendent’s office by the time I reached the sixth grade. Mr. Garth
was a tall, slender, African-American man, who always wore a white,
short-sleeved dress shirt with a tie in the classroom, and he spoke with a
seriousness in his voice that communicated his respect for education and his
love of his students. Everyone loved Mr. Garth, even those of us who didn’t
have him for a teacher. So, you can imagine it was a bit of a shock, a
disorienting feeling, to see him there at the counter in the Beeline, paying
the cashier for whatever it was he was buying.
You see, I couldn’t tell what it
was, because just as quick as my mom had said, “Hey, Mr. Garth,” this legend of
a man spun around to face us with his wares hidden firmly behind his back. I
think he may have said one or two things to my mom, told me to have a good
summer, before he nearly walked backwards all the way out the door and to his
car. I remember thinking how strange he seemed to be acting. As we got back in
the car, I told asked my mom what was wrong with Mr. Garth, and she said,
“Nothing. He just didn’t want you to see the six-pack of beer he bought.”
Now, as an adult, I wouldn’t think
twice about Mr. Garth’s purchase: for one thing, what he does with his time and
money are his business, but I also got to know him better as I got older, as I
worked for the school system as a senior and graduate. There’s not a doubt in
my mind that Mr. Garth wasn’t going home to get drunk or that he was going to
drink while he was driving—he was Mr.
Garth after all, and his respect was not the kind people buy or barter for,
it was earned. But as a kid, a kid who was a student in the very school where
he had taught, the very school where we had programs like D.A.R.E. that
attempted to teach us about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, I was devastated!
How could Mr. Garth—Mr. Garth of all people!—be buying alcohol?! This man so
many of us had put on a pedestal came tumbling off it in my mind in that one
instant simply because he had done something that I (in my adolescent mind)
believed to be horrendous and hypocritical.
Isn’t that what happens to those
we deem exemplary, though? Don’t they eventually fail, break under the weight
of our expectations, wind up letting us down? So why do we do it in the first
place? Why do we elevate individuals to these places of saint-like status? Why
do people seek to elevate themselves to such a perilous place of piety?
Isn’t that what’s happening, what
Jesus warns his disciples about in the first part of our text? “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes,
and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats
in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets…and for the sake of
appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” These scribes were the official scholars of the Law,
headquartered in Jerusalem, associated with the cultic machine that was the
temple, and they wanted to be sure that everyone knew they were that important. They wore
their robes long so as not to be mistaken for anyone lesser, wanted folks to
approach them as they walked down the street, to walk into the restaurant and
have the hostess ask the family in the corner booth to take the table by the
restroom and the fountain drinks. They wanted to be placed on a pedestal, to
have folks recognize them, use them as the example they could never live up to:
“Boy, those scribes sure do know their Bible; they must be something special to
know all those verses by heart, to walk around with Bible tucked under their
arms, saying the most eloquent, long-winded prayers…why you just know they have
to be closer to God.” Oh yeah, these scribes wanted folks to offer them some
reverence, some recognition for their holy office. Really, these scribes were
the type of folks who would never say it in mixed company, but when they were
off by themselves, just the scribes, you know they’d say things like, “Well, we
are just a bit better than those other
folks.”
It doesn’t take many words,
though, for Jesus to crack the porcelain base of their self-erected pedestals:
“They devour
widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will
receive the greater condemnation." Isn’t that an interesting thing to
say: “they devour widows houses?” Makes me think of those television preachers
with their slicked back hair, bleached teeth, and sky-high promises of untold
wealth if you’ll just “sow a financial faith seed” into their ministry, knowing
full-well their target audience or those poor souls living on pensions and
fixed incomes who are just hoping for a miracle and desperate enough to trust
the first fool willing to tell them they’ve got it all figured out. “Don’t you
worry,” Jesus says, “they’ll get what’s coming to them.” They’ll eventually
fall from those pedestals, just like all those folks we throw up on them too.
I
mean, isn’t that what we do with the next character in this text, the next
person upon whom Mark shines the spotlight? “[Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury, and
watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in
large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are
worth a penny.” Now, before we get to this exemplary widow, there’s a
few things worth noting. First, Mark says Jesus was opposite the temple
treasury, which was in the Court of the Women, the middle courtyard between
what was called the Court of the Gentiles (a public space within the Temple
complex where money was exchanged and Gentiles were allowed to enter) and the
Court of the Israelites or the Court of the Men (Jewish women were not allowed
to enter this court, but had to stay in the Court of the Women). I like to
think it was a stroke of genius on the part of Herod the Great and his
architects to place the treasury in the Court of the Women (after all, women
tend to be more generous than men and men tend to be more generous in the
presence of women). It’s here, in this court, where Jesus observes people
coming and putting their money in the treasury.
Now, I don’t know what you imagine when you think
about the temple treasury, but I always imagined something akin to an overnight
deposit at the bank: you know, a sort of hole in the wall where anyone could
come and privately and securely deposit their money—but that wasn’t what it was
like at all. No, in the Court of the Women were thirteen of these trumpet
shaped boxes where people could deposit their gifts—their offerings of metallic
coinage that would clang around the tuba-like openings of these boxes,
attracting the eyes and ears of those in the court to see who was giving such a
large amount. It’s across from these boxes that Jesus is sitting, watching,
observing, when he notices “Many rich
people put in large sums,” and he alone takes notice of “A poor widow [who] came and put in two small
copper coins, which are worth a penny.”
She put in a penny—a penny! Do
you know what you can buy for a penny? Another
penny! And that’s it! Oh sure, I know, some of you can remember when
you could buy a tootsie roll at the drug store or a needle or spool of thread
for a penny (at least that’s what the song says), but you can’t really buy
anything with a penny. You know there’s even a movement in this country to get
rid of pennies, just round everything up to the nearest nickel. It’s true. Why,
I bet more that a few of you have come home at the end of the day, emptied your
pockets of your keys, maybe a pocket knife, a wallet, and upon finding some change
you sorted out the silver coins and (heaven help us!) you threw the pennies in
the trash or in that drawer where you keep old batteries and plastic forks. A
penny—that’s all she gave. Why even bother?
Well, Jesus saw something there, because “he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly
I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing
to the treasury.’” Which one do you think wanted to say to him, “Now Jesus,
I don’t think I saw any widow woman putting money in the treasury, but I’ve
heard more than a few folks throw their clanging offerings down the box. If she
just gave a penny, there’s no way she’s outgiving everyone else!” Of course,
Jesus explains, “For all of them have
contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in
everything she had, all she had to live on."
Now, if we leave it right there, we’ve got every sermon ever preached
about stewardship (some of you could probably even feel your checkbook get a
bit squeamish just at the reading of this text!): “giving to God is supposed to
come from a place of sacrifice, a giving out of one’s need and not simply one’s
want.” I’ll leave that right where it is and let you and the Lord work that out
(heads up: I absolutely believe that giving ought to hurt, ought to cost us
something, and not be some accounting afterthought meant to give us a better
tax break…but I’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come). I’m not entirely
convinced, however, that this is the reason Jesus calls his disciples together
to point out the widow and her gift. Why does Jesus call their attention to
her? Why does Jesus point out certain people along our path in following him at
all? I don’t believe it’s so Jesus can say to us, “See, there’s one who has it
all figured out. There’s one you ought to hold up as the perfect Christian, one
whose face should be cast in bronze and place in the center of the church foyer,
one whose name ought be etched in brass below the window in the baptistry, one
whose image should be in oil on canvas and placed on the wall alongside the
other legends of the faith.” No—when Jesus calls someone to our attention it
isn’t so we can place them on an untouchable pedestal and say to ourselves,
“Well, we’ll never be as holy as they were.” When Jesus points someone out to
us it is to say, “This is the way to do it; she is the rule, not the
exception.”
And isn’t that hard?! I’d rather go on and call this the story of the
widow’s mite, to use this woman as some noble example of what perfect
discipleship could be like, to hold
her up and tell myself that if I can just be as good as those others who were
giving out of their abundance while at least acknowledging that it’s not
enough, that it’s not the same as her offering, then I can keep her example at
an arm’s length—then I can keep Christ’s calling as some far off, “out there”
thing that I’ll never have to reach because I can’t do it like that widow did.
That’s what we do when we deem someone a saint. That’s what we do when we
decide that someone has reached a higher level of holy. We decide that they’re
different from us, able to do things we can’t, gifted by God with more
spiritual awareness, more giftedness, a higher tolerance for sacrifice. But
friends, the truth is, there’s not a single soul in this world more gifted or
capable than another when it comes to living into the fullness of that to which
Christ calls us. We are all the same. You are no better equipped than anyone
else, and no one else is better equipped than you—Christ calls us all to the
same life, the same way. And I know—I know—that’s a hard row to hoe, that’s a
tough truth to take hold of. After all, I want to believe that someone like
Clarence Jordan was just born better than me, with more grit and guts than I’ll
ever have, that way I can have an out, an excuse for when I wilt under the
social pressure to keep quiet and let the status quo grind on, but Clarence was
no better or worse than me. I want to believe that someone like Rosa Parks was
just born with more courage than I’ve got, more determination and a stronger
spine against injustice, but she and I are both made in the image of God and
called by Christ to change the world for the better.
So what’s the difference then? Why call attention to the widow’s gift—the
gift of all she had? Why are there these seeming giants of the faith who I want
to believe are better than me? What’s the real
difference? You want to know? I’m not too sure I really do…because you see, I’m
convinced that the difference—the only difference—is that those folks we place
on the pedestals of piety and whose images we form in our stained-glass
windows, love God with a love so deep and sincere that they actually believe
what God has said. They love Jesus so much that what they give, what they offer
is not a sacrifice, not a risk, but a glad offering of praise and thanksgiving.
It’s like that actually believed Jesus when he said: “do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the
birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of
you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry
about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither
toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed
like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive
today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe
you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?' or
‘What will we drink?' or ‘What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive
for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all
these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.[1]”
Now just imagine if we all actually believed that. Amen.
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